In a 2007 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Johnny Depp proudly
stated that, as he grew up watching Dark Shadows, he wanted to be the
vampire Barnabas Collins. “I think lots of kids did,” he said. “He was
super-mysterious, with that really weird hairdo and the wolf’s-head cane. Good
stuff.” Depp is now luckier than ever to be dear friends with Tim Burton; apart
from the fact that he helmed this year’s film adaptation of the gothic soap
opera, he gave Depp the chance to live his dream by casting him as Barnabas
Collins. I grant you that this is nepotism, but you’d be hard pressed to
convince me that any living actor would have been better suited for this role.
Depp is of an elite group of actors who can disappear into a role so thoroughly
that it’s difficult to tell where the real person ends and the character begins.

Dark Shadows is just plain fun, simultaneously an homage to and a
parody of the original soap opera. In much the same way as Burton’s own
Beetlejuice, it represents a delicate balancing act between comedy and
horror. Unlike Beetlejuice, the comedy has a bit more bite, and the
horror is more elegant and brooding, as if it was taken straight from the pages
of a Victorian gothic novel. As is the case with all Tim Burton movies, it’s
also a triumph of art direction and set decoration. Praise must be given to
production designer Rick Heinrichs, whose vision for Collinwood Manor playfully
blends whimsy with authentic period architecture. Here is a man who knows how to
create the right atmosphere for a story like this. Surely he and Burton have
influenced each other, given the fact that the two have now collaborated on
thirteen projects.

A prologue sequence serves as an expository introduction to Barnabas Collins.
When he was a boy in 1752, he and his parents sailed from Liverpool to Maine to
expand their family-run fishing business. The city of Collinsport was
established, and over the course of fifteen years, Collinwood Manor was built.
As a young man, Barnabas made the mistake of spurning an infatuated servant girl
named Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), who also happened to be a witch. Enraged,
she took her revenge on Barnabas by killing his parents and hypnotizing every
young woman he fell in love with into jumping off a cliff. The last of them was
his true love, Josette du Pres (Bella Heathcote). Barnabas attempted to join her
in death, but was instead cursed by Angelique into becoming a vampire (an
interesting new twist on the vampire mythos, to say the least). She then turned
the townspeople against him. Ultimately, he was buried in a chained coffin the
middle of the forest.

We then flash forward 196 years to 1972, at which point a young woman named
Victoria Winters (also played by Heathcote) travels by train up to Collinsport,
where she hopes to become the new governess for the remaining descendants of the
Collins family. She arrives at a now dilapidated Collinwood and meets: The
matriarchal Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer); her moody and
rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz); her stodgy and greedy
brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller); her ten-year-old nephew David (Gulliver
McGrath), who lost his mother and claims he can still speak to her; David’s
live-in psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), who is herself in
desperate need of counseling; and the manor’s caretaker Willie Loomis (Jackie
Earl Haley), a perpetually drunk goofball.

Barnabas is accidentally liberated from his prison by a construction crew,
most of whom are unfortunately sucked dry of their blood. Despite the
astronomical generation gap – he’s understandably bewildered by a McDonald’s
sign, a TV set, car headlights, asphalt, a lava lamp, a mirror ball, and the
fact that women are allowed to be doctors – he returns to Collinwood determined
to revamp his once thriving fishing business and in turn restore his family’s
honor. The competition, and this should not surprise anyone, is presided over by
none other than Angelique, who now calls herself Angie. When she learns that
Barnabas has escaped, she simultaneously vows to win him back and to destroy his
business and family for good.

The film is obviously supposed to in part be funny. Much of the humor stems
from Barnabas’ difficultly in adapting to late twentieth-century American
culture. This includes having to contend with a group of pot-smoking hippies and
an appearance by Alice Cooper, who Barnabas declares is the ugliest woman he has
ever seen. But it’s also supposed to be gothic and melodramatic, ghosts,
werewolves, black magic, and even a romance between Barnabas and the secretive
Victoria all finding their way into the plot. I’ve heard complaints about the
meandering storyline and sudden shifts in tone, which I find strange given that
the beloved original series frequently made use of overly dramatic plot twists.
You cannot expect Dark Shadows to be anything more than what it is.